Speaking of "A Whale", here is an article about it from today!!

[link to www.oilspillnews.net]



What ever happened to that ship, A Whale, that they thought of using in the BP oil spill in the Gulf?

— Maxine S., Ashland

It didn’t work. The 1,100-foot-long converted iron ore freighter owned by Taiwanese shipping magnate Nobu Su and his company TMT Offshore was tested twice in the Gulf of Mexico this summer, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

On its first outing, a company spokesman blamed rough ocean conditions, which had sent other skimmers into ports, for the massive ship’s limited success. After a second try, TMT Offshore spokesman Bob Grantham was quoted as saying that the dispersed nature of the oil throughout the water prevented the ship from collecting large amounts of oil. Experts speculated that the skimmer might have been more successful in an Exxon Valdez-type spill, where heavy crude collects on the surface in a smaller area.

A Whale, manned by an all-Indian crew, was converted into an oil skimmer in Portugal over a 10-day period in June with the intention of tackling the Gulf oil spill, although it had no contract for the clean up and the technology was largely untested, reports said.

Su was quoted in The Christian Science Monitor as saying that his company would put what it had learned to work in future spills.

As to where the ship is now, marinetraffic.com, a website that tracks public data from ship transponders with receivers onshore, mostly in Europe and North America, reported that as of Sept. 30, A Whale was in the Indian Ocean, headed for Singapore. Since then the ship apparently has remained on the open ocean, out of range of onshore data collectors.

Edit for spelling